side the Emperor at
Mont-Saint-Jean."

The baron rose, cast a sidelong glance at Luigi, and said, in a sardonic
tone:--

"Monsieur is not decorated."

"I no longer wear the Legion of honor," replied Luigi, timidly, still
standing.

Ginevra, mortified by her father's incivility, dragged forward a chair.
The officer's answer seemed to satisfy the old servant of Napoleon.
Madame Piombo, observing that her husband's eyebrows were resuming their
natural position, said, by way of conversation:

"Monsieur's resemblance to a person we knew in Corsica, Nina Porta, is
really surprising."

"Nothing could be more natural," replied the young man, on whose face
Piombo's flaming eyes now rested. "Nina was my sister."

"Are you Luigi Porta?" asked the old man.

"Yes."

Bartolomeo rose, tottered, was forced to lean against a chair and
beckon to his wife. Elisa Piombo came to him. Then the two old people,
silently, each supporting the other, left the room, abandoning their
daughter with a sort of horror.

Luigi Porta, bewildered, looked at Ginevra, who had turned as white as a
marble statue, and stood gazing at the door through which her father and
mother had disappeared. This departure and this silence seemed to her
so solemn that, for the first time, in her whole life, a feeling of fear
entered her soul. She struck her hands together with great force, and
said, in a voice so shaken that none but a lover could have heard the
words:--

"What misery in a word!"

"In the name of our love, what have I said?" asked Luigi Porta.

"My father," she replied, "never spoke to me of our deplorable history,
and I was too young when we left Corsica to know anything about it."

"Are we in vendetta?" asked Luigi, trembling.

"Yes. I have heard my mother say that the Portas killed my brother and
burned our house. My father then massacred the whole family. How is it
that you survived?--for you were tied to the posts of the bed before
they set fire to the house."

"I do not know," replied Luigi. "I was taken to Genoa when six years
old, and given in charge of an old man named Colonna. No detail about
my family was told to me. I knew only that I was an orphan, and without
property. Old Colonna was a father to me; and I bore his name until I
entered the army. In order to do that, I had to show my certificate of
birth in order to prove my identity. Colonna then told me, still a
mere child, that I had enemies. And he advised me to take L